When I began working for an international bank equipment company, we were just starting the changeover from film cameras (35 and 70mm) to video, and the first machines we installed were Beta format. They were modified consumer units and offered up to 96 hours on a standard tape. As we all know, Beta quickly departed the scene in favor of VHS, and manufacturers still originally used commercial chassis recorders with extended time record modes. The problems were:
Consumer grade machines weren't made to run 12/6 with standby the rest of the time
Customers balked at spending money for premium quality tapes and instead bought the cheapest shite they could, and re-used it a hundred times
Customers didn't want to invest in regular PM work on the machines
As a result, I'd find machines with heads full of crud, bad heads, bad head drum bearings, and so forth until it didn't make sense for me to essentially spend 5 hours in the field rebuilding a machine without the necessary bench tools to improve accuracy to an optimum level.
Thankfully, there was a separation in the market and a handful of companies began to specialize in ultra heavy-duty video recorders that could offer up to 480 hours on a single T-120 tape, leaving the consumer machines where they belonged. Mind you, these commercial machines weren't cheap, but didn't require the intensive service frequency of their weaker brothers.
Enter the age of gihugic disk drives at a pittance, and digital recording is where we're at today. DVRs or digital video recorders now combine sequencing scanners and directly input numerous cameras, and offer outstanding quality, but again-good ain't cheap.
Over the same period of time, cameras and lenses have undergone a huge transformation. Vidicon tubes are gone in favor of CCD (charge coupled device) cameras, auto iris lenses have gotten very inexpensive, and video installations no longer need to have heavy piggyback coax with power, since a composite signal can be run over UTP (uniform twisted pair).
Those who don't wish to spend money on upgraded equipment will be stuck with the crap they own. Those who are serious about security can not only tell the hand you're playing in a casino, but whether or not the two gnats on your right shoulder are about to settle down for some hot sticky gnat love.
